The invention relates to a safety device for a motor vehicle.
A safety device of this kind is disclosed in DE 2,151,599 C2 (B 60 R 21/04). Inside a dashboard, a deformation element is there arranged, extending more or less rectilinearly over the entire width of the vehicle and configured as a knee-restraining member. The deformation member is at the same time utilized to back up the steering gear and/or the pedal suspension. As illustrated in more detail specifically in the parallel application U.S. Pat. No. 3,856,103, in frontal a collision, owing to the attendant bulkhead intrusion, an impact on the pedal articulation is to be reckoned with, such that the pedal will be moved towards the occupants and thus considerably endanger the lower extremities especially. More recently, designs have been disclosed that provide either a swinging of the pedal towards the bulkhead (see DE 3,904,616 A1, B 60 T 7/06) or a retraction thereof from the footnotes (see esp. DE 4,305,290 A1, B 60 K 23/00). The principle of action common to the two sources last mentioned is that the bulkhead intrusion attendant upon a head-on collision leads to a relative displacement vis-a-vis a transversely extending and substantially flexurally rigid structural beam. From this relative motion, by a certain arrangement of functional parts associated with the pedal, a swinging or shifting motion is obtained.